Announcement – Nov 25th: Please note the wikispaces email sent to the group for final project submission guidelines.
Week 11 | Data Journalism
Hopefully you are in lab/final project production mode – tonight I'll be providing a brief overview of the emerging field of data journalism but we'll primarily be focusing on 'checking in' for progress reports on your final project. It is expected that you'll be demonstrating work next week that varies in completeness from '95% done' to 'thorough rough copy' – and final submissions will be made via email on December 1st.
Week 10 | Big Data, Open Data
This week we'll fire through the latter half of the case studies, I'll give a brief lecture on open/big data and we'll review final projects in progress. Note: If you haven't already submitted a lab, you need to do so ASAP in order to stay on schedule. Please bring tangible work to review – sketches, wireframes or at least the data set you'll be exploring. We are reaching the point when ideas need to be translated into experiments and mockups.
This week we'll be thinking about spatial relationships and one of our two seminars (OpenPaths) will deal with that topic. Please make sure you've read the Crampton and Monmonier articles as we'll be discussing them in setting up to examine a few precedents. It is expected that each student should have determined a general topic for their project and show up with work/data/a proposed workflow to discuss with the group – moving forward come prepared to present for 5-10 minutes each week (and to provide your peers with feedback), also once you've got some data to work with – start prototyping some tests and mockups and submit them as labs to get those requirements out of the way.
This week we are scheduled to talk about 'performative data' but we'll only make as much time for that topic as we can after the seminars for the week are presented and the final assignment is produced – some of the material we were going to talk about might get put on the backburner for a few weeks. Please ensure you take some time to skim through Mitchell Whitelaw's "Art Against Information: Case Studies in Data Practice" though, tonight's case study is Nancy Paterson's Stock Market Skirt (linked above) and I'll try to at least cover it in broad terms. The primary goal for this week is to get the wheels turning on the final assignment, so come prepared to think/talk about that.
This week is going to be tight for time as we've got a lot of things to attend to. We'll spend the first third of the class reviewing your baseball card assignments and have a conversation of the challenges of working with this (very specific) dataset. Randy will be presenting the first seminar (on Processing) and I'll do a really quick presentation on visualizing networks based on The New York Times R&D Lab's Cascade. I'll also introduce the case study assignment and provide you with some questions that will help you start to think about the final project. I'll also post the overdue screen-scraper tutorial over the weekend – sorry for the lag but I imagine you've been pretty occupied with the first assignment anyways.
Nicholas Felton – 2010 Feltron Annual Report (Related: check out the video of Nicholas' talk at the EYEO festival this past June)
Week 5 | Timelines
This week we'll be talking timelines, dipping our toes in the stormy seas of R (working through the CH. 4 in Visualize This) and I'd like to see the progress you've made on your baseball card projects – please come with sketches and mockups and be prepared to discuss them. Those of you who have not booked a seminar topic/date need to do so ASAP.
Some additional links from William J. Turkel
William sent along some links to several tools and services that he uses, note them below:
Also, the promised video on the Blackmarket for Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge
Week 4 | Tools & Techniques
This week we'll be welcoming historian William J. Turkelto our class to talk about the role of visualization in his work. William's breadth of research is wide and fascinating and he describes his range of interests as "computational history, big history, STS, physical computing, desktop fabrication and electronics" – one of the projects that he'll be talking about tomorrow is Criminal Intent. In addition to William's talk, I'll be presenting a range of tools that you might consider exploring as the semester progresses, introducing the seminar project and providing some time to discuss your plans and/or progress on the 21st Century Baseball Card assignment.
Richard Saul Wurman discusses Information Architecture
Week 3 | Handling Data
Last week I briefly touched on the importance of Richard Saul Wurman to the field of information design. Please take a moment to watch the above video, where Wurman discusses the origin of the phrase 'information architecture' (which he coined), some of you might also be interested in his 192021 project. This week we'll be discussing a few provocative readings, learning about some key methodologies for information design and delving into handling data. I'll also be introducing the '21st Century Baseball Card' Assignment, which you'll be working on for the next few weeks. Finally, we'll be discussing the work of Hans Rosling and get a cursory introduction to his Gapminder software – but more importantly, his great ability to tell stories with data (those interested in Rosling are advised to make an hour to view his The Joy of Stats documentary that was shown on the BBC – it is available here).
Note: We will not be doing the 'build a web scraper' tutorial in ch. 2 of Visualize This tonight, that exercise is now optional (you may complete it on your own time, if you are interested). I will be writing up an alternate exercise (a walkthrough) for you to follow that is considerably more straightforward tutorial utilizing the web service Needlebase ( http://needlebase.com ) and I promise to share this with you before mid October.
This week we will be conducting a whirlwind review of the past several centuries of graphic communication – to try to get a sense of what lineages we might connect visualization to. Please ensure you are up to speed on all the readings for this and last week and be prepared to discuss the Wolfram and Tufte readings.
Week 1 | Welcome!
Welcome to CCT470, the foundation is undoubtedly in place for our whirlwind theoretical and practical tour of information visualization this semester.
This wiki is just getting up and running, but please note the outline, schedule and information on required texts.
Please request access to this wiki ASAP, track down your textbooks immediately and consider subscribing/combing through the archives of some of the blogs in the sidebar.
Week 11 | Data Journalism
Hopefully you are in lab/final project production mode – tonight I'll be providing a brief overview of the emerging field of data journalism but we'll primarily be focusing on 'checking in' for progress reports on your final project. It is expected that you'll be demonstrating work next week that varies in completeness from '95% done' to 'thorough rough copy' – and final submissions will be made via email on December 1st.
Week 10 | Big Data, Open Data
This week we'll fire through the latter half of the case studies, I'll give a brief lecture on open/big data and we'll review final projects in progress. Note: If you haven't already submitted a lab, you need to do so ASAP in order to stay on schedule. Please bring tangible work to review – sketches, wireframes or at least the data set you'll be exploring. We are reaching the point when ideas need to be translated into experiments and mockups.
Spatial Information Design Lab – Million Dollar Blocks (2005)
Week 8 | Visualizing Spatial Relationships
This week we'll be thinking about spatial relationships and one of our two seminars (OpenPaths) will deal with that topic. Please make sure you've read the Crampton and Monmonier articles as we'll be discussing them in setting up to examine a few precedents. It is expected that each student should have determined a general topic for their project and show up with work/data/a proposed workflow to discuss with the group – moving forward come prepared to present for 5-10 minutes each week (and to provide your peers with feedback), also once you've got some data to work with – start prototyping some tests and mockups and submit them as labs to get those requirements out of the way.
Nancy Paterson – Stock Market Skirt
Week 7 | Performative Data
This week we are scheduled to talk about 'performative data' but we'll only make as much time for that topic as we can after the seminars for the week are presented and the final assignment is produced – some of the material we were going to talk about might get put on the backburner for a few weeks. Please ensure you take some time to skim through Mitchell Whitelaw's "Art Against Information: Case Studies in Data Practice" though, tonight's case study is Nancy Paterson's Stock Market Skirt (linked above) and I'll try to at least cover it in broad terms. The primary goal for this week is to get the wheels turning on the final assignment, so come prepared to think/talk about that.
NYT R&D Lab – Cascade
Week 6 | Visualizing Networks
This week is going to be tight for time as we've got a lot of things to attend to. We'll spend the first third of the class reviewing your baseball card assignments and have a conversation of the challenges of working with this (very specific) dataset. Randy will be presenting the first seminar (on Processing) and I'll do a really quick presentation on visualizing networks based on The New York Times R&D Lab's Cascade. I'll also introduce the case study assignment and provide you with some questions that will help you start to think about the final project. I'll also post the overdue screen-scraper tutorial over the weekend – sorry for the lag but I imagine you've been pretty occupied with the first assignment anyways.
Nicholas Felton – 2010 Feltron Annual Report (Related: check out the video of Nicholas' talk at the EYEO festival this past June)
Week 5 | Timelines
This week we'll be talking timelines, dipping our toes in the stormy seas of R (working through the CH. 4 in Visualize This) and I'd like to see the progress you've made on your baseball card projects – please come with sketches and mockups and be prepared to discuss them. Those of you who have not booked a seminar topic/date need to do so ASAP.
Some additional links from William J. Turkel
William sent along some links to several tools and services that he uses, note them below:
Programmable Web
Infochimps
Freebase (wiki)
Digging into Data Challenge – List of data repositories
Scraperwiki
Google API Discovery Service
Yahoo Pipes
Also, the promised video on the Blackmarket for Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge
Week 4 | Tools & Techniques
This week we'll be welcoming historian William J. Turkelto our class to talk about the role of visualization in his work. William's breadth of research is wide and fascinating and he describes his range of interests as "computational history, big history, STS, physical computing, desktop fabrication and electronics" – one of the projects that he'll be talking about tomorrow is Criminal Intent. In addition to William's talk, I'll be presenting a range of tools that you might consider exploring as the semester progresses, introducing the seminar project and providing some time to discuss your plans and/or progress on the 21st Century Baseball Card assignment.
Richard Saul Wurman discusses Information Architecture
Week 3 | Handling Data
Last week I briefly touched on the importance of Richard Saul Wurman to the field of information design. Please take a moment to watch the above video, where Wurman discusses the origin of the phrase 'information architecture' (which he coined), some of you might also be interested in his 192021 project. This week we'll be discussing a few provocative readings, learning about some key methodologies for information design and delving into handling data. I'll also be introducing the '21st Century Baseball Card' Assignment, which you'll be working on for the next few weeks. Finally, we'll be discussing the work of Hans Rosling and get a cursory introduction to his Gapminder software – but more importantly, his great ability to tell stories with data (those interested in Rosling are advised to make an hour to view his The Joy of Stats documentary that was shown on the BBC – it is available here).
Note: We will not be doing the 'build a web scraper' tutorial in ch. 2 of Visualize This tonight, that exercise is now optional (you may complete it on your own time, if you are interested). I will be writing up an alternate exercise (a walkthrough) for you to follow that is considerably more straightforward tutorial utilizing the web service Needlebase ( http://needlebase.com ) and I promise to share this with you before mid October.
Charles Minard – The Minard Map (1869)
Week 2 | A brief history of visualization
This week we will be conducting a whirlwind review of the past several centuries of graphic communication – to try to get a sense of what lineages we might connect visualization to. Please ensure you are up to speed on all the readings for this and last week and be prepared to discuss the Wolfram and Tufte readings.
The evolution of the web
Week 1 | Welcome!
Welcome to CCT470, the foundation is undoubtedly in place for our whirlwind theoretical and practical tour of information visualization this semester.
This wiki is just getting up and running, but please note the outline, schedule and information on required texts.
Please request access to this wiki ASAP, track down your textbooks immediately and consider subscribing/combing through the archives of some of the blogs in the sidebar.